Provocations in Place of Answers

8/13/2019 Provocations in Place of Answers

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Provocations in Place of Answers:Sollemnitas in Conceptione Immaculata Beatae Mariae Virginis

2007 James S. Cutsinger

Zurich, Switzerland: 8 December 2007

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Why the poetry of the sage Frithjof Schuon? Why the musical echoes from other religions? Why

the traditional Latin Mass? Why the feast of the Immaculate Conception? Why Femininity?

Why this constellation of beautiful but seemingly disparate elements?

Try as we might, there can be no answering these questions by means of mere prose,

which is fallen poetry, or perhaps even poetry, which is fallen music. The answers must come, if

at all, in the total experience of the Sollemnitasitself, an experience at once sensory and spiritual,

physical and metaphysical. For like all sacred rites, the Mass is a fusion of liturgya temporal

act of the peoplewith theurgythe eternal act of God. Work out your salvation with fear and

trembling, for God is at work within you.

But perhaps in place of answers we might risk a few provocations. As long as one looks

along and not at them, they may serve as a finger pointing toward the moonto speak in Zen

idiomshowing the way toward a Way that is at once a descent and an ascent: a descent through

the heart into the immanent interiority of one religion and an ascent with the mind toward the

transcendent unity of all religions.

Why Frithjof Schuon?

Metaphysician, Sufi shaykh, painter, and poet, Frithjof Schuon (1907-98) was one of the

twentieth centurys foremost authorities on the worlds religions and the pre-eminent spokesman

of the perennialist school of comparative religious philosophy.

Distilling this philosophy to its very quintessence, Schuon once summed it up with three

adjectives: universalist, dogmatist, traditionalist. Universally free from all religious exclusivism

and dogmatically opposed to all subjectivist relativism, the perennial philosophy is best known

for its teaching that there are many paths to the Summit and thus for honoring the saving truth

and symbolic integrity of each of the worlds revealed traditions, including Hinduism,

Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.


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During the last few years of his life, Schuon performed what many regard as a miracle of

transposition, recasting the major themes of his often difficult and demanding philosophical

writings into the simple melodies of lyric poetrysome in English, many more in his native

German. Here one finds him reasserting, and celebrating, the unparalleled importance of

invocatory prayer, the liberating beauties of virgin nature, the iconic significance of sacred art

and symbolism, and the initiatic imperative of undertaking spiritual work within the protective

framework of a divinely given tradition.

But what one hears most in these poemson a few occasions explicitly, though more

often as a deeply resounding ison or shimmering overtoneis the vivifying voice of the

Feminine, unmistakably beckoning us to penetrate more deeply into the heart of our own faith in

order to see at its center the center of every faith.

Why Musical Echoes?

Sir John Tavener has acknowledged several times in recent years that Schuons work, especially

the poetry, is now a key influence on his music, and in composing this setting of the Mass he has

endeavored to express in sound something of what the perennialist sage expressed in words.

Since music is to essence what the visual arts are to form, it is in the very nature of things

that the esoteric or inward significance of sacred doctrines and rites should lend itself to an

orchestral and choral exploration.

Equilibrium is vital in this domain, however, for it is easy to lose ones balance.

A traditionalistcan fall to the side of believing that his religion alone has the Truth; thus

historically many Christians have insisted that there is no salvation outside the Church. On the

other hand a universalistcan readily fall to the opposite side of supposing that any sincerely held

opinion, however human, is as good as another and that the kaleidoscopic or syncretistic mixing

of as many opinions as possible is a desirable goal.

Hence the importance of finding the fulcrum supplied by the Schuonian dogmatist, who

knows that Truth is an objective Reality, soaring above our small minds, but who has come to

acknowledge, and delight in, its multiple self-expressions. Participating in the sacramental life of

our own religion as fully as possible, we gladly accept it as a gift of Divine Revelation, while at

the same time realizing that others have received other gifts: gifts divinely bestowed in spite of

indeed, paradoxically, because oftheir exoteric irreconcilability with our own.


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The composer has taken full account of this paradoxamong other ways in positioning a

solo soprano in a place apart, high in a gallery overlooking the nave. The sacred formulas and

divine Names she invokes, drawn as they are from other traditions, are thus in but not of the

Massinterpolations, not constituent parts. Eschewing glib and superficial correlations, Mr

Tavener is helping us to see with our ears that if we force too close an inter-religious conjunction

between sacred forms appearing alike on their surface, we may fail to fathom a deeper, truer

unity running along quite different lines.

A voice is echoed when its sound strikes the sheer face of a cliff, even as a tree is

reflected when its light meets the surface of a sparkling clear lakea mirror in which top

becomes bottom and bottom top. We hear the echoing presences of the Hindu goddesses and are

moved to feel their truly Marian mercy, but at the same time a little reflection of our own will

remind us that there must also be difference and inversion.

Unlike Lakshmi, Sarasvati, Parvati, Tara, and the others, the Blessed Virginto quote

the poet Gerard Manley Hopkinsis merely a woman, hence the difference. And yetand

now comes the inversionHer presence, power is great as no goddesss was deemd,

dreamd.

Why the Traditional Latin Mass?

This inevitable question is actually two questions, requiring two responses: one horizontal and

the other vertical.

A form of worship as apparently hidebound as the traditional Catholic Mass will no doubt

seem to many a surprising setting for the jewels of perennialist insight. Some will surely object

that the Massthe Latin Mass in particularhas become the favorite retreat of the most

obstinately narrow-minded and exclusivistic of Christians. But if so this merely proves once

again, if proof were needed, that the corruption of the best is the worst. The use of Latin,

traditionally, was precisely for the sake of universality, comprehensiveness; the language was

meant not to close but to open doors.

Antiquity, dignity, sobriety: these undoubted virtues were, and are, part of the power of

the Latin; but also a certain fluidity naturally flowing from a synthetic and impersonal idiom,

unobstructed by the individualist eddies to which modern vernacular tongues are prone.


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Tam antiqua, tam nova, said Saint Augustine: so old, so new; and we may add in this

context, still in reference to the language: so solid, so liquid; so rigorous, so supple; so formal, so

freshso Yang, so Yin.

Thus the horizontal amplitude of this Mass.

But the more important question is vertical, a matter of altitude.

The Real is eternal, therefore beyond all temporal sequence. The least inadequate way of

expressing this fact, in Christian discourse, is to say that God is always doing whatever He

does. It is true that He madethe world, but no less true that He is makingand will continue to

makeit; for He does what He does all at once in principio, in the beginning He is. The same is

true of the events of His incarnate life: He is still being born in Bethlehem, still in the midst

of His earthly ministry, still dying on the Cross and rising from the deadbut already

returned in His glorious Second Coming.

Sacred liturgy is a disentangling from temporal flux and the demands of contingency, and

it can therefore serve as a portal into this world of timeless happening. It is a movement of return

to a starting point we never left: a point before line, plane, and solid, and therefore before the

crystallization of competing formsa point whence we are enabled to glimpse, if only through

a glass darkly, the eternal Fountain from which all the religions have come flowing down.

But how does onesaythis?

Hieratic posture, symbolic gesture, balanced movement, rhythmic repetition, the

resplendent sound of incantation and the resounding light of candle flame and icon; and thenat

the moment of consummationtexture, taste. The sacred drama of the Mass is a pictureto say

nothing of a song, a banquet, and a wedding nightworth a thousand words: an exhibition, for

those with more than eyes to see and ears to hear, of what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,

neither hath it entered into the heart of man.

Why the Immaculate Conception?

Of all the possibilities of the liturgical year, how is it that this particular feast was selected as the

occasion for a perennialist deepening and expansion?

Exoterically, Mariology is rooted in Christology: what the Church proclaims about the

Mother is always a function of what it teaches its faithful concerning Her Son.


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saint, I am the one immaculately conceivedwhich, though startling enough, would have

done no more than confirm the dogmabut rather, I am the Immaculate Conception.

Is it not clear from this predicate nominative that the Conception of which She speaks is

more than the miraculous means whereby She Herself came to be? Must it not be what She is?

Not just My beginning was flawless, but I am the flawless Beginning; not just I am

pure, but I am principial Purity.

Not merely not subject to original sin.

Original Sinlessness. Primordial Perfection.

Why Femininity?

But Immaculate Conception is not the Virgins only Name. She is also Handmaiden of the Lord,

Co-Redemptress, and Mother of God.

Each of these traditional Christian epithets illumines a different face of Mary, a different

facet of Her immaculate stature; each highlights a particular relationship between Femininity and

Masculinity; and each in turn testifies to the liquefying, liberating power of the Feminine.

In the perennial philosophy, as in many of the worlds great religions, Feminine and

Masculine are not merely labels for biological properties, or even psychological qualities. On the

contrary, these world-creating and world-bridging Powers are operative on planes of Reality

where sex, and even gender, as such would be meaningless. We see them in the relationship

between liquid and solid, silver and gold, expansion and contraction, moon and sun, soft and

hard, music and geometry, silence and sound, dark and lighteach of these syzygies an instance

of the opposition-in-union between Yinand Yang.

As for the specifically Marian manifestations of Yin, three distinctive relationships are

worthy of our prayerful reflection: in the first the Feminine is subordinate to the Masculine; in

the second the Feminine and the Masculine intermingle as equals; in the third the Feminine

supersedes the Masculine.

And in each of these three we may distinguish three meanings: exoteric, esoteric, and

methodicas with the Celestial Hierarchies, a trinal triplicity.

As Handmaiden of the Lord, the Virgin is exotericallythe type of self-effacing humility,

supplication, adoration, obedience: the perfect model of what the created Feminine should be,

whichever its gender, in relation to the Creative Masculine. Be it unto me according to Thy


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Word.Esotericallyand etymologicallythe Virgins humility is the humus beneath our feet,

the Native American Earth in its relation to Sky: the perfect equilibrium and pure potentiality of

Prime Matter, Cosmic Substance.Methodicallythat is, with regard to our own spiritual work

the Handmaiden is peaceful repose at the center, non-acting-act. Consider the lilies of the field.

As Co-Redemptress, the Virgin is exoterically the protecting, encouraging, sustaining

counterpart to Her Son. Present at the conception, birth, death, and resurrection of the Masculine,

the Feminine participates in every stage of His redemptive life. Esoterically, She is Shakti, the

radiant power of the Divine, the Hindu Goddess in relation to Her masculine consort. And there

appeared a great wonder in Heaven: a woman clothed with the sun. Methodically, the Co-

Redemptress is every member of the Body, the Church, each of whom is called into synergy

active cooperation with Godin order to complete in the flesh what was lacking in the

suffering of Christ.

As Mother of God, the Virgin serves exotericallyto guarantee the integrity of the single

Person of Christ: Femininity is prior to Masculinity strictly in reference to the human nature of

the Son.Esoterically, however, She is the mothering Tao, which is older than God (Lao Tzu),

and thus She is the very Principle of the Masculine Principle: Cause of What preceded Her

(Saint Gregory Palamas) and Origin of the Beginning (Saint Peter Damian). Methodically, the

Mother of God is the indeterminate infinitude of the Self, the I-AM-THAT-I-AM, prior to its

self-determination as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. She is each of us filled with all the

fullness of God.

Human dimensions, cosmic dimensions, Divine dimensions: in each the same soft quality

of early spring, the flowering of trees beneath the snow.

Why This Constellation of Elements?

The way of descent and the way of ascent are one and the same, we have said: the opening of our

hearts to the particular truths most deeply embedded in our own religion is coincident with an

opening of our minds to the universal Truth embracing and transcending all religions.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conceptionnot merely of but as the Blessed Virgin

Maryis an opportunity to ponder one such truth in Christianity, perhaps the deepest and most

inward of all. More than a dogma apropos of God incarnate, it bears indirect witness to the

human modesty, cosmic reciprocity, and metaphysical priority of the Feminine, and thus in


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turnif we are careful to listen to the silences between the notesto a Space beyond place, in

which the mutual exclusions and antagonisms of the religions cannot but fall away, fluttering

useless wings.

The witness is indeed indirectno more than a glance, a hint, a gestureas behooves so

implicit and subtle a Mystery. If anyone should object that there is nothing in the Gospel to prove

the possibilities here suggested, that the esoterist is going further than the Immaculatarequires,

whether in its meaning or by Her words, the Schuonian dogmatist cannot but agree.

But this is just as it should be, there being no demonstrations in this domain. Original

Sinlessness or Primordial Perfection is not the Name of a discrete and supremely powerful Deity,

whose sovereignty could be expressed in propositions or defended by argument. The title points

us instead to a Priority beneath and behind such a Beingthe Primacy of a hiddenness,

emptiness, openness too soft, too small, too simple, too secret for dogmatic words of Her own.

But then comes the echo, the initiatic inversion, and the surprise of an ineffable Splendor.

The humility of a given, mortal woman, like us in all things sin only excepted, is seen in its

relative nothingness as nothing less than the liquid reflection of a Femininity antecedent to God

Himself. The dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence outshines all brilliance with the intensity

of its darkness (Saint Dionysius the Areopagite).

Nigra sum, sed Formosa: I am black but beautiful.

Can we begin to glimpse what this means? Are we able to grasp, however lightlyand

the more lightly the betterthat the immanent Emptiness of the Immaculate Conception is the

transcendent Matrix of all sacred forms?

If not, then it is time to turn from our broken prose to poetryand thence to the

Sollemnitasitself.

Stella Matutina

Der Morgenstern erhebt sich aus der Nacht

So wie die Gttin Venus aus dem Bade

Des Meereseine Perle, dann ein Weib;

Urweiblich ist des Himmels Wundergnade.

Sie ist Geheimnis; sie ist nicht Gesetz,

Sie ist das freie gttliche Vergeben

Tief aus den Wassern der Unendlichkeit

Und niemand kann der Isis Schleier heben.

Frithjof Schuon

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Provocations in Place of Answers